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Community Partnership Advisory Service (CPAS)

In 2006 and in response to Lord Laming’s Inquiry on the Victoria Climbie serious case review, eight London Boroughs pulled resources together in partnership with the Department for Education and the Home Office, to pilot the Community Partnership Advisory Service (CPAS).
Currently funded by the London Borough of Camden, the service aims to work around specific areas of harm to children stemming from traditional practices, abuses linked to faith and violence associated with cultural beliefs. The CPAS has over the past 12 months successfully delivered workshops and training courses on issues such as Female Genital Mutilation, forced marriage and Honour Based violence.

The CPA Service in LB Camden is established with Voluntary Action Camden and its aims and objectives include:

Ensuring that Camden’s diverse communities know about UK laws on child safeguarding, reporting procedure on child protection concerns and where to get professional help and advice.

Improve collaborative mechanisms for keeping Camden’s children safe, by gathering and sharing information and continuing improvement in practice between statutory bodies, local community organisations and faith communities.

Bridge any gaps in communication that may exist between statutory services and communities it serves.

Methodology: Collaboration/Partnership

The success of any community engagement lies in the partnership work. Relevant stakeholders include the Local Authority, voluntary sector and community groups, the NHS, the Met-Police- Child Abuse Team, the School Inclusion Team and major charity organisations working on child rights such as NSPCC as well as major funders of specific harmful practices.

Ability of combining CPA priorities of child safeguarding with those of the targeted community groups

Valuing the views of the community group members in the selection of priority issues has been the root causes for the success of CPA Service in particular the series of ‘Protecting children in the community’ training sessions.

The Service will offer the following opportunities for:

Coordinating child safeguarding training and awareness raising to BMER community and faith groups

Identifying common grounds within cultural understanding of the laws and processes for safeguarding children against harm

Developing support mechanisms to influence child safeguarding policies and procedures.

Providing general support to targeted community organisations and faith groups on child safeguarding.

Providing limited capacity building support to BMER groups that relates to child safeguarding, setting up groups and fund raising.

Roles of the Community Partnership Advisory Service (CPAS) include:

To identify and work with BMER communities and faith groups, supplementary and weekend schools within Camden by offering training opportunities and links to statutory services on safeguarding children.

To work with BMER communities, faith groups and supplementary schools in increasing their knowledge and awareness of child abuse and harmful practices including FGM, abuse linked to belief, child trafficking, discipline in faith setting and honour based violence.

To work with statutory child service providers in understanding the diversity within BMER communities on child rearing and harmful traditions